Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One

by McPhail, Melissa

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Jaya hissed an oath in a fiery language. Trell did not understand the words, but he gleaned their meaning when both Náiir and Ramu arched brows and turned to her. She lifted her chin. “I’ll say it again if you like.”

  “Once was quite enough, Jayachándranáptra,” Ramu murmured. He returned to gazing after the departing Leyd, looking troubled.

  “He’s up to something,” Náiir grumbled.

  “A safe assumption,” Ramu agreed.

  Jaya grunted deprecatingly. “You could say the same about any zanthyr. Not one of the creatures is ever about what he seems to be about.”

  Náiir was also watching the departing Leyd. “You take your chances trusting a zanthyr in every case,” he agreed, “but some really aren’t worth the headaches they cause.”

  Trell took these aspersions with a grain of salt. He held no prejudices against zanthyrs, or really against any of Alorin’s diverse races—how could he cast the first stone when he didn’t even know his own heritage?—but he wasn’t unaware of the zanthyrs’ notoriety for self-serving, capricious acts of betrayal. And yet…Vaile was a zanthyr too, Leyd had said. Trell wasn’t sure what he thought about that, though it made sense out of the puzzle of her spar with Loghain; a mere woman holding her own against a Whisper Lord was stupefying, but a female zanthyr? Well…

  “He is of the worst sort,” Ramu agreed quietly and with a sorrowful tone.

  Trell looked to him. “Because he’s a zanthyr?”

  “No, Trell of the Tides,” the Lord of the Heavens returned. “Because he feels he is entitled to his immortality and need not earn it. He has no respect for the miracle of life.”

  Balaji appeared out of the night then. Trell saw that he also wore the same garments as his male cousins and decided it must be some kind of uniform. “Rhakar is leading them in now,” Balaji reported as he joined their group. He flashed a smile at Trell, but hadn’t time to greet him before Ramu asked, “Who is the Espial among these traitors, Balaji?”

  “Rothen Landray.”

  “Ah…” Ramu nodded. He retreated to his thoughts again.

  “I take it this must be his little group of followers then,” Náiir observed. “Cecile Andelaise, Sahne Paledyne, Pieter van der Tol...”

  “Yes and a few others,” Balaji confirmed. “It’s one of the things Ramu will have to sort out.”

  “Sort out?” Ramu said.

  “There are a pair of Basi who claim they are not with the others and came to give their oaths.”

  “Which pair?”

  “Usil al’Haba and Pavran Ahlamby.”

  “Ah…” said Ramu again, as if this explained everything.

  “Here they are now,” Jaya murmured.

  Indeed, a party of three was approaching out of the night: a woman leading two turbaned men. As they neared and the woman came into the firelight, Trell saw that she was Jaya’s darker twin. Instead of golden-red hair, hers was black, and instead of orange-gold eyes, hers were blue.

  “Who have you, Mithaiya?” Ramu inquired.

  “Usil al’Haba and Pavran Ahlamby,” Mithaiya replied. “They want to renew their oaths.”

  Ramu looked at the two men. Their pinched expressions well conveyed their nervousness. “Is this true?”

  “Yes, Lord of the Heavens,” they answered together, and then the taller of the pair added with an undertone of desperation, “We want to redeem ourselves in the First Lord’s eyes. We have done as he bade us.”

  Ramu arched brows. “Indeed, have you? Very well then. Mithaiya, you know what to do with them.”

  The Basi exchanged a tense look at this, but they followed obediently as Mithaiya led them away again. They had just vanished into the dark beyond the torchlight when the others came into view. Rhakar and Vaile led a half-dozen men and women. They were lined up single file, and their hands seemed to be bound in front of them though Trell could see no rope or chains. Most of them stared at their feet, though a few of the men glared at Vaile as she patrolled the line swinging her swords. She looked different that evening, dressed in black leather britches and vest over a longish black tunic, and with her long hair in a thick plait down her back. Trell remembered his initial impression of her as being highly dangerous. Her prowling stance tonight reaffirmed the wisdom of this decision.

  “Landray’s crowd are the youngest of the lot of them,” Balaji noted as they approached.

  “’Tis a tragic end,” Jaya murmured, shaking her head. “Cecile Andelaise could not have seen more than fifteen name days before she was branded a traitor and made to work the Pattern of Life.”

  Strangely, Trell recognized all of these names, but it took him a moment to call up the recollection from the fog of his forgotten adolescence. He saw a round room lined with bookshelves and a wall of windows overlooking an overcast sea…a dark-haired tutor towering above himself and two other boys, one older, one younger. They were sitting in a row at a table stacked with books…flashes of a hand drawing—his drawing of…of a dragon—passed back and forth between himself and his…yes, his younger brother, while the tutor read off a list of…names. These very names. Yes…he’d been taught them, and they were called…“The Fifty Companions,” Trell murmured aloud as the title came to him.

  All eyes turned his way, and there was apprehension in every gaze. “Traitors all,” Náiir advised, but there was an edge to his tone that implied his concern that Trell might think otherwise.

  Any significance Trell might have placed on the activities of the Fifty Companions, or on their being referred to as traitors by these drachwyr, was far overshadowed just then by the recollection of the very moment wherein he’d learned their names.

  I was tutored in a tower by the sea.

  Trell’s heart was near to bursting with the exhilaration of the memory. The images of the tower brought a specific feeling to his soul, one Trell had forgotten without realizing it was gone, but it came back to him then in a heartbreaking moment of tenderness.

  It was the familiar feeling of home.

  Home! That was my home.

  Though he didn’t know where that home lay, he knew there was a tower there, and it was beside the sea. And I have two brothers…only…that didn’t seem correct. Yet he was sure that the two boys, both with grey eyes and grins so like his own, were indeed his flesh and blood.

  He was puzzling over this when he realized the drachwyr were all watching him. Jaya and Náiir looked wary, Ramu’s level gaze was unreadable, and Balaji was regarding him with a sinuous smile that sent Trell’s skin crawling down his spine. Of all the drachwyr, Balaji by far had been the most amiable, and yet it was Balaji who made Trell the most uncomfortable, as if at any moment something malignant and deadly with sharp claws was going to burst out through Balaji’s perfect white teeth and gobble Trell up in one fell bite.

  “Have you a difficulty with this, Trell of the Tides?” Jaya inquired in a tone that wasn’t cold but certainly wasn’t warm, pulling Trell’s gaze to her.

  It took him a moment to remember what she was referring to. “Why, uh…no, my lady…I was just—”

  “His mind is elsewhere, I do believe,” observed Balaji. He settled Trell an ingratiating smile that made Trell’s teeth hurt.

  “That is well,” said Ramu in his quiet but intense way, “for it is time we dealt with this. Náiir.”

  Náiir nodded and took Trell by the arm while the rest of the group walked off to meet up with Rhakar and Vaile.

  “It bodes well to find you among us tonight, Trell of the Tides,” Náiir said, “though a possible battle is never a favorable excursion. Take care to stay in your tent now, for we must face some unpleasant things.”

  This surprised Trell. “I am recovered enough to join you, I should think,” he replied with good humor. “You needn’t think me fragile, Náiir.”

  “Fragile indeed compared to us,” Náiir returned, shooting Trell a quick grin, “but this was not the intent of my admonishment. No,” an
d his expression sobered. Deep lines furrowed his brow as he continued. “These traitors are wielders and Adepts, not mere mortals to be bested with the hard-worked steel of men. Ramu will give them leave to defend themselves before we claim their lives for the First Lord. They will likely attempt some spineless Patterning, but their ill-summoned magic will have no effect on us. You, however…” and here he paused to give Trell a concerned look, “you would be in harm’s way, and death this night is not the Mage’s intent for you.”

  Trell arched a brow. “And what is the Mage’s intent for me?”

  Náiir shrugged. “Who knows the inner workings of a Mage’s mind?”

  Trell decided he was not fond of that phrase.

  Just then, Ramu returned. “Come Náiir,” he said. Then he gave Trell one last smile in farewell. “I am glad we had a chance to meet, Trell of the Tides. The First Lord is right about you. You are a good man, and I am thankful that you survived.”

  “I am thankful that you saved me,” Trell said, returning Ramu’s smile though he felt an old frustration welling.

  Ramu waved absently. “Well, we felt responsible, as I said.” He turned to go, but Trell grabbed his arm, suddenly remembering what had captured his attention before. “Wait, please—I have just one last question: how can you have been responsible? I thought the cave-in was the result of a battle of magic between Radov’s wielders and the Mage’s Sun…dragons...”

  It struck him even as he said it.

  Ramu’s lips spread in a slow smile, which Náiir echoed, and there was something about those smiles that made Trell’s hair stand on end. He realized in that moment that while these creatures—all of them, Vaile included—seemed genteel and quite civilized, there was a side to their nature that was decidedly feral.

  Then whatever it was that had bothered him about Ramu’s smile vanished, and it was just a smile again—amiable, if still partnered with his typical intensity. The Lord of the Heavens clapped Trell on the shoulder, and his gaze was warm. “May fortune bless you in your search, Trell of the Tides.”

  Then he and Náiir turned and walked to meet the others, who had halted perhaps twenty paces away, just at the edge of darkness.

  Trell watched them until they disappeared into the night with the traitors in tow, then he wandered back inside the complex feeling unnerved. Sundragons. Six of them.

  Why hadn’t he put it together before?

  Because none of us knew they were shapeshifters. No one knows!

  The sudden realization that he’d been conversing rather intimately with creatures who could, in their animal form, squash him with a single toe was quite unsettling.

  Sundragons, he mused again, shaking his head.

  Trell marveled that he wasn’t more disturbed. He’d seen these beings in their animal form; he knew their deadly nature and their power. Strange…and yet not so strange. Not now, he realized, for he’d admired them as dragons, and now…now he admired them as individuals.

  Back in the sitting room, Trell picked up his wine. Ramu’s wine…and studied it before downing the last few swallows. Amazing that he did this, he thought as he gazed at the goblet in his hand. But hadn’t Jaya said they were of the fifth strand? Now the reference made sense to him—he vaguely recalled something about the fifth strand of elae being the one that controlled the elements themselves, the one nobody could work…and something else…a story from the Age of Fable where a Bemothi wielder used the fifth strand to command the earth to rise up and form itself into a grand castle. Or had it been a palace in Agasan?

  Where did I learn about the five strands of elae? he wondered, remembering again that tower room and the drawing he shared with his…brothers.

  I do have a brother. I must! Despite his earlier doubts, somehow he knew it was true, knew it in the depths of his soul. He could see both of their faces so clearly in his mind now. One with grey eyes so like his own, the other blue-eyed and stern-featured but still similar enough to remind him of himself five years ago. Again with the image came the understanding that one brother was lost. But which one remained?

  Trell knew then that if it took all of his days, he would find him.

  Regaining the Mage’s tent, Trell threw himself onto the bed and clasped hands behind his head. He thought of Ramu’s proverb. Perhaps there was truth in those words. His journey had already proven valuable, and he knew there was much yet to be gained in making it.

  Part 2

  Awakening

  Fourteen

  ‘None shout the misdeeds of others so loudly as the righteous evildoer.’

  – Ramuhárikhamáth, Lord of the Heavens

  Leilah n’abin Hadorin, youngest daughter of Radov abin Hadorin, Ruling Prince of M’Nador, stood trembling on the balcony that overlooked the vast gardens of her father’s palace in Tal’Shira by the Sea. She lifted a shaking hand and touched her cheek where an angry red handprint flamed. He’s never hit me before, she thought as tears leaked from her dark brown eyes.

  But he’s never caught you eavesdropping while he plotted with the enemy, either.

  Considering the circumstances and her father’s ill humor of late, a single slap in the face was a mercy.

  ‘Fool girl!’ she heard her father’s acid hiss, his dark eyes flaming with fury. ‘You’re lucky I caught you spying instead of one of Bethamin’s Ascendants or their Marquiin! Get you gone from my sight while I consider how to deal with you!’

  Leilah wiped her cheeks, wet with tears, and choked back a sob. She hadn’t been spying—though Raine’s truth, she’d overheard far too much of the conversation to deny the accusation with any conviction—nor could she tell her father why she’d actually been hiding in his study. Radov had never been known for his compassion, but since the Ascendants of the Prophet Bethamin arrived in Tal’Shira by the Sea, he seemed to have lost all taste for it.

  What does it mean that he allies with the Prophet Bethamin?

  Nothing good, of that she was certain.

  M’Nador’s neighboring kingdom of Dannym had banned the Prophet’s teachings, and the Queen of Veneisia had issued an official censure, which was practically the same thing. M’Nador depended on an alliance with Dannym and Veneisia to continue its military campaign against the Akkad; that her father spoke of an alliance with Bethamin could only mean he intended to betray his other allies.

  The thought chilled her. Even now, both kingdoms supported M’Nador in their war against the Akkad, sending troops and supplies, even precious Adept Healers who were few enough in number that releasing even one from the service of their own kingdom was a noble sacrifice.

  And now my father allies with Bethamin.

  Leilah didn’t like the Prophet; every time she listened to his teachings, she came away feeling cold inside. Since Bethamin’s Ascendants and their gauze-shrouded Marquiin had come to Tal’Shira, the sun hadn’t once appeared from behind the overcast that had arrived as if part of the Prophet’s entourage. The palace staff had grown edgy and fretful and talked in whispers now, and her father’s Guard had become increasingly sharp-tempered, just like their monarch. Leilah saw how everyone was falling prey to the mantle of gloom that surrounded Bethamin’s minions, yet apparently she was the only one who did.

  She thought of the Marquiin again and shuddered.

  They were Adept Truthreaders—or had been, once; for they weren’t like any of the other Truthreaders she’d met. There was a darkness about the Marquiin, a sense of cold malice. Everyone said that Truthreaders—real Truthreaders—couldn’t lie, but Leilah wouldn’t trust a Marquiin for the whole Kandori fortune. She couldn’t bear to even approach the mind-readers, for they all exuded a sour stench that made her wonder what foulness was hidden beneath the grey gauze that covered them from head to toe.

  Even before she learned of her father’s planned alliance, she’d tried to speak to her older sisters about her fears—that is, the two not as yet married off to sheiks or Avataren lords—but they’d complained she was hurting their heads wit
h talk of politics and sent her from their solar. Her brothers were all long gone, seeking their fortunes in foreign lands or leading her father’s armies into battle against the Akkad, but she doubted they’d believe her anyway; they all thought of her as ‘little Lily,’ as if she was still running around half-naked splashing in the palace fountains and not a girl of sixteen, of birthing age.

  That was the other problem, the reason she’d been in her father’s study without his knowledge: to use his personal seal. Her own letters were meticulously read by her father’s spies, but his seal was never disturbed. It was imperative that her letters left the palace under this guise, else… Even as a shuddering sigh escaped her, she smiled through her tears at the memory of her true love Korin’s handsome face, of his sultry dark eyes and his amazing lips, of the feel of his hands on her bare skin…

  It had been almost a year since she’d seen Korin, for as soon as her father learned of her interest in him he’d banished the boy from the kingdom. The moment still felt as devastating in memory as it had upon its experience. Then came Fhionna and her dangerous plan, the secret letters ferried back and forth, the promise of rescue…

  Soon none of this will matter, she tried to reassure herself. Soon he will come and whisk me away, and we’ll sail as far east as the seas will take us. There, we’ll raise children and goats and live happily in solitude, needing nothing but each other.

  Smiling, sighing at the thought, Leilah dropped her hand to the little purse at her side where she kept his secret letters and—

  Oh no!

  She spun around looking for the handbag. It was gone! Abruptly she remembered falling in her father’s study after he’d struck her. She’d felt something catch and tug, but the moment had been too shocking to notice much else. The little chain must’ve caught on the edge of the table.

  With a sick feeling of dread, Leilah realized her purse was still in her father’s study. It wasn’t only her and Korin who would face her father’s wrath if he discovered those letters; Radov would stop at nothing to unearth her accomplices. Fhionna and Aishlinn would eventually be hunted down and given fifty lashings just for ferrying the letters back and forth, and that’s if they survived their own capture.